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Help Charities: Don’t Use City Recycling

Schools hope recycling funds won’t change Note: one school’s marquee I saw this weekend pleads for people to continue to bring their paper to it as it brings them “$80 a month”. Unfortunately, I didn’t have my camera with me.

Ok. Government schools aren’t charities but many charities (such as the Bountiful Community Food Pantry) use such bins for funding. Additionally, as Mr. Lyman points out in his letter, while Greenfiber will place bins in business lots but, often, the business donates the proceeds from the bins to charity.

While the above articles relate to paper recycling, the same applies to aluminum. All those pop cans are pretty valuable. In my area (and many others), the (Boy and Girl) Scouts collect them and turn them in as a supplementary funding source. I doubt they’re the only charitable groups who do so (just ask around – I bet schools also collect aluminum). Of course, the other option is to save the cans yourself and donate the money to charity, or as Mr. Schroeder did, put your kids through college with the money and give it to charity after they graduate (video here).

So rather incentivize the forced recycling fiat in Bountiful and other south Davis cities, give the valuable recyclables to groups who positively impact the community and don’t force their will onto others via governmental edict.

Closing notes: I contacted Centerville city and the very polite operator noted that the city council is leaning for an opt-out provision but no final decision is made on that either. I would suggest Centerville citizens contact the city and ask, at least, for an opt out provision. Even then, be very careful, it is easy for the city council and special interests to reneg on their promises/statements when they think no one is watching as demonstrated recently by Bountiful City.

Finally, Bountiful City residents – while the City is acting as the billing department for the private recycling company (Waste Management) and the actual recycling program is run by WM, don’t even think of not paying for the recycling if you don’t plan on using it. The city will cut your services. As I said before, these programs are, ultimately, a government-enforced monopoly. For more posts on the local recycling issue, click here.